


Unsealed Hearts

by Oakentide



Series: SAO Pride Week [2]
Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-11 00:04:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18418679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oakentide/pseuds/Oakentide
Summary: Written for SAO Prideweek 2019's Day 2 prompt. Trust.Eugeo reflects on the days following the incident at the Sword Mastery Academy. Spoilers for Season 3, Episode 24, or Volume 14 of the Light Novels.





	Unsealed Hearts

I won’t ever forget the collapse of the Taboo Index as an influence on me. It’s a strange thought, but when I learned to trust in my own judgement, I’d argue this was when I first became a “person”, and not a body which simply does as told. It felt as though a meticulously constructed set of dams, controlled flow governed by unwavering structure, was simply overwhelmed. Nothing had broken, but none of it had meaning anymore. There was only a torrent that I couldn’t deal with. The gates had all opened simultaneously, and over the course of the past few days the speed and level of those waters inexorably rose. The shape of the bottom of a lake is irrelevant if it’s deep enough, and the surging eddies on its surface took several forms.

In the disciplinary chamber at the Swordcraft Academy, I could still barely move when Kirito was frantically trying to heal my eye wound. Sick from shock and grief, I barely paid mind to instinctively reaching for his hand, or to him clasping it, neither letting go until the dawn. He never stopped trying, but quickly found the limits of his Sacred Arts training. Nonetheless, those hands definitely felt like a conduit for “Life” to be transferred to me through him. No Sacred words were spoken, only desperate whispers, begging for me to recover, which I’ll still hold sacrosanct for as long as I live.

The following morning, a conversation between Kirito and our dormitory supervisor, though I wasn’t taking much of it in. I was too preoccupied with the absence of a dull pain where my eye was as my thoughts skirted around, then through, then throughout speculations of the purpose of the Church, and of this world. The exact details are obsolete, now, but even saying that, I’d still love to be there to see the reunion they discussed.  
Shock gave way to numbness as we were imprisoned. I couldn’t sleep, and it wasn’t even that I was worried about our impending sentence. Nor was I as confident as Kirito that escape was assured, a matter of time and finding the solution. I couldn’t help reliving memories, especially ones that felt new as of now. Many from before Alice was taken still felt incomplete, but all were imbued with what seemed seamlessly added, but must have been always there. I had been brimming with impulses that I hadn’t even noticed, and which were now lucid and clear, having replaced the throb of my eye’s “seal”, which punished me for certain thoughts. It was while we were breaking our chains to escape the prison that I noticed the strongest and most important of these impulses with clarity for the first time. 

Somehow, the sensuality of that tug of war filled me with hollow nostalgia. He had to work hard to equal a moderate effort on my part. I felt it in the resistive force coming back along the chain and in his cries of struggle. Our goal was to deplete the durability value of our chains, meaning we should both apply the same force, but we also wanted to do it quickly. This was what I told myself as I increased how hard I pulled, but I was also cognizant of a longing that must have always coursed through me, only recently uncovered and unbridled by the breaking of the seal, and revealed now.

I needed to hold him, and I couldn’t reach him. For the first time since meeting him, the notion of being separated from him forever seemed very real, and this chain needed to break for his comfort and assurance to have the same weight as they did in my memories of us touching each other. My skin tingled as I relived those, unfettered by the ethical code which had been overcome by my willpower. Our progress accelerated as I became curious to find the point where he’d falter in trying to match me. However, I also wanted to feel his physical power being directed at me, even controlling me, as it was somewhat doing in the chains now. There was too much that I wanted to do. With that, I stopped holding back and pulled with all of my might. Kirito’s physical form belied the strength of his reaction. It seemed that even without a sword he had Incarnation at his disposal. Just before the chains finally snapped, the sounds of his primal scream were rushing from my ears through to my whole body, invigorating me. We still needed to escape.

My heart raced when the bars in turn were snapped by Kirito’s impromptu whip, and it finally dawned on both of us that there was no way the jailer didn’t hear the commotion so far. As the bar’s last clang along the ground faded, I heard the distinct sound of snoring off in the distance, and silently thanked Stacia-sama for what must be divine intervention, and what I hoped was also approval. I raced to Kirito and grabbed him, pulling his body towards me, burying my face in his chest. His arms and chest pressed firmly, needily. I wanted to burn all of these sensations into my body and my memories forever. The fear of being discovered and stopped by someone had been there in some capacity for the entire time since the seal breaking until now, though what I was afraid of being stopped from doing wasn’t as obvious. 

I looked up and caught a glimpse of his eyes. I can’t remember whether I saw them close before mine did, but it wasn’t long after I stood upright that I plunged my face towards his, his lips barely hesitating for a moment before firming as he returned the kiss. We stared at each other for a long while. The Taboo Index forbade kissing someone you weren’t married to. Perhaps if my life had turned out another way, I’d have been interested in contorting the terms of those marriages. The exuberance and freedom I felt now only suggested one course of action to better the world: tearing out and then healing every sealed eye in the land. For the time being, Kirito shuffled uneasily backwards and forwards. If Lost Children of Vector were exempt from the Taboo Index, as I’d began to suspect recently while collating my experiences with Kirito and every story I’ve heard, then there’d be no reason for this. He certainly enjoyed the kiss, and reciprocated, and had never before mentioned another man or woman in this context. But I was the one who kissed him, and that seemed important. I noticed that a very familiar smile was starting to take shape, and I could almost hear the words he that it suggested he was thinking.

“Is there a rule in the Taboo Index that says I can’t be kissed by someone I’m not married to?”

I resolved to kiss him again, and he was more enthusiastic than he’d ever been outside of a sparring session or a meal. It was the best I could do with the time we had. We both needed to keep moving. I was relieved, to borrow an odd turn of phrase from Kirito that now made complete sense, to get it “out of my system”.

**Kirito's Point of View**

He took me by surprise when he kissed me, and I’m glad he kissed me twice. My time in Underworld left an indelible mark, with every etch treasured forever in memories with verisimilitude far exceeding those from Aincrad. Thus, in my retelling of it to Asuna, there were few omissions. I’m ashamed to find it a mixed blessing that Yui and Asuna won’t ever know of this one, as I’ll take it to my grave, and I alone am the last that will need to do that.

Give me the hardest decision I’ll ever have to make, and I’ll learn to trust whatever I decide. Take that away, and I can’t help but feel I’d choose the first friend I made over the first sword I could trust, especially given she wasn’t the last.


End file.
